Senate Republicans returned to the Capitol on Monday with heightened anger toward President Donald Trump, whom many members blame for significant losses in last week’s House and Senate races. The tension is raising the likelihood that the party may pivot away from the lame-duck president in the lead-up to the 2028 presidential election, according to GOP aides and strategists.
Frustration intensified following Trump’s Friday announcement that immigration hard-liner Stephen Miller will replace Susie Wiles as White House chief of staff. The appointment suggests a doubling down on the president’s policies, particularly regarding immigration enforcement, despite an election in which Hispanic voters swung decisively toward Democrats, especially in Texas. Rep. Marlin Stutzman (R-Ind.) criticized the move on Sunday, stating that Miller should be fired rather than promoted. “If your team takes a beating as badly as we took this last week, you have to fire people,” Stutzman said in a CNN interview. “You don’t promote those who are — who were in charge of what was supposed to be delivered.”
Whit Ayres, a prominent Republican pollster, noted that Senate Republicans will likely be less deferential to Trump after suffering a huge loss of seats. Ayres observed that while Trump will remain the party leader for the next two years, the “knee-jerk obeisance to whatever his whims are at the moment is likely over.” He cited widespread resentment among Senate Republicans over Trump’s endorsements of candidates who lost by large margins, including Michael Whatley in North Carolina, Darline Graham in South Carolina, and Ken Paxton in Texas.
Republican sources indicated that Trump undermined their chances in key races by endorsing weak candidates and failing to adhere to message discipline. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) and his leadership team had lobbied Trump for months to support Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) over Paxton in the Texas primary, but Trump ignored their advice and endorsed Paxton, which aides said sank Cornyn’s chances. Additionally, Trump often veered off from the planned messaging strategy, focusing on topics such as the White House ballroom and the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, rather than legislative accomplishments like the tax cuts in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
“We’re up here talking about the generational benefits of avoiding a $4 trillion-plus tax hike and everything else that’s inside that bill, and then the president is talking about the Reflecting Pool or the ballroom, and those are the things that get the headlines,” one Senate GOP aide said. “Message synchronization was off.” Senators were also frustrated when Trump dismissed the passage of the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act as a “big yawn,” prioritizing instead the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE America) Act, which had little chance of passing.
Financial strategy also drew criticism, with aides claiming Trump waited too long to deploy his campaign war chest. Although Trump announced in late October that he would spend more than $400 million by Election Day, strategists complained that political allies waited until the final weeks to spend, resulting in higher television ad rates and diluted firepower. While Trump blamed the losses on poor Republican candidates, declaring on election night that he would have won “IN A LANDSLIDE” if he had been on the ballot, many Senate Republicans believe the blame for the loss of at least seven seats lies squarely with the president.
<small>Source: Yahoo News — read the original story there.</small>